


let your heart beat here

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Other, Pre-Relationship, Reunions, Widomauk Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “Mollymauk?” Caleb whispers.Molly tries a smile, and hopes it doesn’t look too false. “Hi, Caleb,” he says. “You’re all very hard to track down, did you know that?”or: a slightly more fucked-up Molly finds the Mighty Nein’s house in Xhorhas.





	let your heart beat here

**Author's Note:**

> title is from Dashboard Confessional’s “Heart Beat Here”.
> 
> for day 1 of Widomauk Week, “reunion”.

It takes four months and some desperate deals made to keep from catching the Empire’s eye, but eventually Molly finally, _finally_ manages to catch back up with the Mighty Nein. It’s fairly easy, honestly: he just describes a band of exceedingly colorful mercenaries (or heroes or pirates or _whatever the fuck they are now_ ) and people say, _oh, right, those fucks._

Apparently, they’ve made something of an impression. Molly can’t help but laugh to himself about that. He’d turn and say something to Yasha, but she’s not there, so he keeps it to himself. He’s keeping a lot of things to himself, like what he’d been dragged into, for a little while, fresh out of the ground.

He—is trying very, very hard not to think about it.

Anyway.

Xhorhas is—new, to say the least. Finagling a way into it in the middle of a war takes the better part of a month, and enough gold that he ends up resorting to roughing it for a while on his way in, hanging out with a few mercenaries willing to take on a slightly panicky tiefling for a few days. Probably helps that he’s become exceedingly good at killing things, lately.

It’s worth it. It’s all worth it when he gets into Ghor Dranas, or Rosohna, or whatever the fuck they’re calling it now. It’s all worth it, because he asks for the Mighty Nein and someone points out a fucking _huge_ house with a goddamn _tree_ growing on top of a tower. It’s all worth it for the steps he takes towards the door, the sight of a house that he could maybe call home, the certain knowledge that his friends are here and he can rest at last, at last.

He stops at the door, tail lashing back and forth, twinging just the slightest bit.

Could he stay here? Would they still take him back? It’s not like Molly’s death really stopped them for very long, after all, so maybe he’s fooling himself. Maybe they’ll take one look at him, cracked and damaged and even more claustrophobic than before, and gently direct him somewhere else. Maybe they’ll treat him like he’s Kiri and take him somewhere safe.

Maybe they don’t want him anymore.

And maybe that’s for the best. Gods know what’s been left behind in his head, he’s already caught himself thinking too many times about how to catch someone off their guard and kill them in the most efficient way possible. He hasn’t, he doesn’t want to, but it’s still there, nibbling at the back of his mind. What sort of person thinks that? Why would they think that? Why would he think that?

He shivers. He can just go. He can just leave. Nobody’s seen him yet, they don’t have to know he was ever here.

Except—

Well, he came all the way here, didn’t he. Crossed right into Xhorhas, even, and that had been a rough time. He can’t just turn away now, when he’s so close he can taste it, when he’s standing right on the doorstep. He can’t let his terror get the best of him now, at this most critical of moments.

He glances around, seeing a couple of curious drow slowing down as they pass the house by. A couple speed up when they see him, and Molly tucks one hand back into the pockets of his coat, fingers brushing over the pocket knife he’d stolen when he’d gotten free.

He turns back to the door, lets out a slow breath. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he says to himself, and raises a fist. His knuckles rap against the dark wood, loud and clear, and he rocks back onto his heels.

Shit. Maybe they’re not home. He should’ve asked if they were _home_ —

“ _Ja_ , I’m coming down!”

Molly freezes at the sound. For a moment, all he can think of is Astrid, her dark eyes sharp and cold, despite their warm brown color. She’d cut into him while magic held him still, pressed crystals into the open wounds and watched them glow and bind themselves to his skin as he screamed and struggled. All he can think of is Eodwulf, shaking him awake, pulling him by the collar to meet his and Astrid’s teacher, his hands gripping painfully onto Molly’s horns so Astrid could slice him open for her crystals.

They’d hurt going in. They’d hurt even more when he had to cut them out himself.

He briefly contemplates turning around and running away anyway when the door opens, but instead of Astrid or Eodwulf or anyone else, there’s just—Caleb, in the doorway, looking so much better than when Molly had known him. His hair’s been washed, falls to his shoulders in soft red waves, and his beard’s been shaved away. His coat is a deep purple with silver threads shot through it, and he blinks at Molly in shock like he’s seen a ghost.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb whispers.

Molly tries a smile, and hopes it doesn’t look too false. “Hi, Caleb,” he says. “You’re all very hard to track down, did you know that?”

\--

Caleb’s the only one in the house, it turns out—Jester and Fjord are looking into jobs around town they can take on while they’re there, Beau’s trying to find her mentor from the Cobalt Soul, Yasha’s gone with Beau, Nott’s out on a date with the halfling from her story who is apparently her husband now, and their other cleric, Caduceus Clay, he’s apparently gone to a blacksmith to try and get a sword fixed.

“I was studying some spells when you knocked on the door,” Caleb says, leading him to a small kitchen with a long table, stained from earlier use. “I thought you were someone else, I did not realize—how long have you been alive?”

Molly chews on his lower lip, eyes flickering to the two windows. It’s hard to tell from here if there’s anyone watching, but he takes the chair keeping them in sight anyway. Old habits die hard and all that, and old habits that were conditioned into someone die hardest of all. “Seven months,” he says, “but honestly? For, what, three of those, it wasn’t really _living_ , more like just being—trapped.”

“What do you mean?”

Molly lets out a slow breath, and looks down at his hands, tries not to think of the ghosts that must be dogging his heels now, that have been nipping at his feet since he managed to escape. “I didn’t come back to life willingly,” he explains, tugging his sleeves down to expose his scars, especially the new ones: large, jagged lines etched onto his skin. “The Empire needed more weapons for the war, I guess. So they—pulled me back.”

Caleb sucks in a horrified breath. “Oh,” he says. “So—how did you escape?”

“I blinded a handler and ran like hell,” Molly says. “Dug out every crystal they put in me, which wasn’t _easy_. Kept to little towns, back roads, kept a hood up and didn’t look the Crownsguard in the eye. And I kept looking for you.” He rolls his sleeves back down, and says, “Imagine my surprise when I heard rumors about a very colorful group of people showing up in _Xhorhas_ , of all places.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was an accident?” Caleb says.

“Honestly, yeah,” says Molly. “I figured as much, and anyway, seems like it panned out just fine for you.” He sweeps his hand grandly out, encompassing the kitchen and the windows and the living room and the tower and the _house_ , or maybe the _home_ now. He’s never had a home. He never thought he’d be sitting in his friends’ home, wondering if they still have room for him. “You have a house, and you can’t imagine how relieved I felt hearing that. I didn’t feel like trying to track you through the whole continent again.”

It’s a lie. He would’ve, if he had to. The Mighty Nein are _his people_ , the ones he freely chose to live and die for. He’d have followed them to Tal’Dorei if he had to, especially since his other options are limited to a long-disbanded circus and a group of secretive, murderous assassins serving a greedy king and his duplicitous officers in the Cerberus Assembly.

“You are unbelievably lucky, Mr. Mollymauk,” says Caleb. “No one has ever escaped the Scourgers before. Or—at least not to my knowledge, I suppose, and I’ve found that it can be fairly limited when it comes to the _Vollstrecker_.” He chuckles, then, but it’s hollowed-out and humorless, and Molly reaches across the table to take Caleb’s hand in his, rub a thumb over his knuckles, for both their comforts.

Silence falls over them both, like a burial shroud draped over a dead body. It suffocates, lodges in Molly’s throat like dirt falling into his mouth. He doesn’t want to ask. He _doesn’t_. He wants to let Caleb have this to himself, so, so badly, wants the weight in his stomach and the needles in his heart to just go _away_ and leave them both be.

“How did you know what they called themselves?” he asks, at last, when the silence gets to be too much. “You don’t have to answer,” he adds, and for a moment he thinks Caleb won’t answer, from the way Caleb’s eyes flicker down towards their joined hands.

His hand is very warm. Molly doesn’t think he’s held somebody’s hand in months, not like this, not with the goal of offering comfort.

“I was almost one,” says Caleb, softly, at last, and rolls his sleeves up to expose pale, jagged lines on his skin—they’re not as obvious as Molly’s are, having had time to heal and fade, but they’re unmistakable.

Molly’s eyes flick upward from Caleb’s arm, to meet haunted blue eyes. “Oh,” he breathes, and gently squeezes Caleb’s hand.

\--

Caleb makes them both some tea, and Molly curls his fingers around the warm cup, breathing the fragrant scent in before he takes a sip. For a while, they don’t talk, but Molly rests his foot against Caleb’s bony ankle, just to be sure he’s still there. Caleb doesn’t seem to mind.

After a while, Molly’s eyelids start to grow heavy, and he yawns, pushing his chair back as he stretches his arms up over his head. “Gods,” he mutters, feeling the exhaustion of walking so far for so long finally settle into his bones. “Do you have a couch I can sleep in? A spare room?”

“We just had a cot put into the library,” says Caleb. “Apparently I sleep there half the time anyway—you can take it if you want, at least until everyone gets back. We can talk about where you’re to stay then. Somewhere safe, maybe.”

Molly purses his lips at the thought. “What if I don’t want somewhere safe?” he says, before he can completely stop the question from slipping off his tongue.

Caleb’s eyebrows disappear into his hair. “What do you mean?” he asks.

In for copper, in for gold. “Kiri,” he says. “We left her in Hupperdook, because we thought it’d be dangerous for her if she just kept going with us. Which isn’t wrong, she’d have been chicken dinner if we kept her a day longer.” Caleb winces a little, but he doesn’t argue, so Molly bulls on: “But I’m not Kiri, and I—I’m not a liability. I know because I made _damn sure_ not to be. I just—”

He falters, and runs a hand through his hair. Caleb can more than take care of himself now, Molly’s sure, but all he can think of is how—how _fragile_ Caleb had sometimes seemed when they’d known each other. He could dish out damage but he couldn’t take it half so well, and Molly’s willing to bet that’s still the same. The rest of the Mighty Nein can _absolutely_ look after themselves, too, considering that they killed the slavers who kidnapped three of them and killed Molly himself a while after Molly closed his eyes on Glory Run Road. He won’t even mention Yasha, because she’s proven herself more than capable of taking care of most threats, over and over.

But goddammit, he can’t turn off the instinct to watch their backs, keep them safe, keep them _alive_.

“I want, I _need_ to choose who I stand with,” he says, and Caleb flinches a little. “And I’m choosing you. I chased you across Wildemount, all the way here, to tell you that if you’ll all have me, then I’ll fight with you, for you, whatever you need. But I’m not going to sit still and wait for you to come back to safety. That’s not me.”

“...I was really talking about sleeping arrangements,” says Caleb. “Of course we’ll have you, there was never any question of whether you would stay or not. Mollymauk, we have _missed_ you, _I_ have missed you, none of us could’ve turned you away.” He stands up now, moves around the table to take Molly’s hands once more. “What made you think we would?”

Something warm blooms in the middle of Molly’s chest, right smack between his lungs. “Oh,” he says. “I just—for a while I thought I’d be a liability.”

“They haven’t kicked me out yet,” says Caleb reflectively, “they wouldn’t think to turn you out into the cold. Not when you’ve only just come back.” One hand lets go of Molly’s hands, but only to reach up and brush some hair back from his face, behind his ears, tender and sweet.

Molly breathes out slow, the warmth in his chest finally thawing out the wintery frost in his lungs. “In that case,” he says, his heart beating faster against his chest, the warmth of Caleb’s fingers against his cheeks still lingering on his skin, “I’ll take the cot.”

Caleb smiles, and Molly’s heart has just enough time to do a flip in his chest before someone knocks on the door once more.

“ _Caaaaaaaay-_ leb, we’re back from shopping!” Jester calls out.

“Do you want to go greet them?” Caleb asks.

Molly grins, and says, “Of course.”


End file.
